Completing your CPD cycle: linking to the Osteopathic Practice Standards

This is the second in a series of blogs in which Stacey shares some of the most frequent questions osteopaths are asking when completing key components of the CPD scheme.

We know from the 2020-21 CPD evaluation survey that most of you (84%) are already linking your CPD to the Osteopathic Practice Standards (OPS) and that this has steadily increased as you’ve moved through your CPD cycle.

Most of you reported doing this routinely as you go along (68%). However, as you begin to finalise your CPD records you may be thinking ‘how do I link the CPD I have undertaken to the OPS? Do I need to complete CPD for each individual standard?’  

Firstly, I think it’s important to remember that this element of the CPD scheme is about linking your activities to the themes of the Osteopathic Practice Standards, not each individual standard that sits under each of the four themes.

So when undertaking any CPD activity, my top tip would be to take a quick look at the suggestions listed below. These should help you make a decision about which OPS themes the activity has predominately focused on. You can visit the OPS website for a more detailed view of each theme.

Theme A: Communication and patient partnership

• Areas include: Listening, giving information, consent, partnership.

Theme B: Knowledge, skills and performance

• Areas include: sufficient knowledge and skills, working within competence, keeping up to date.

Theme C: Safety and quality in practice

• Areas include: history, examination, treatment, modesty, acting quickly to protect patients from harm.

Theme D: Professionalism

• Areas include: ethics, integrity, honesty, responding to complaints, confidentiality, working with others/referral (this is also relevant to all other themes).

You can also use the reflection templates contained in our CPD workbooks which include some form of mapping across the OPS as part of the reflective activities. The practical workbook on keeping CPD records should be especially helpful and can be downloaded from our CPD website.

This workbook also contains two completed examples – the CPD activity record and the CPD record summary template. You can use either to link some of your key CPD activities to the OPS.

Remember, some, if not most activities you do might cover more than one of the OPS themes, so you don’t need to do one specific individual activity for each theme, and there is no requirement for a particular amount of time to be spent on each theme. If your CPD activity covers more than one theme, you also don’t need to specify how much time you spent on each theme during the activity.

Further resources

You can read the first blog in this series about completing your objective activity.